Thursday, October 4, 2012

why obamacare is hazardous to our health

obamacare is a 2,700 page law that was passed without democrats even reading it.  since republicans didn't have enough votes to block it in either the house or senate...it sailed through despite republican's objections.  romney was correct, obama did spend his first two years working on and passing obamacare while ignoring small businesses going under, and millions of people losing their jobs.  as they lost jobs...they lost houses, cars and self-respect.  all of this, just to pass a bill that democrats have salivated to get for 50+ years...government controlled healthcare.

it starts with obamacare and ends with a single-payer system which is a nice sounding way of saying only the government will be paying doctors and hospitals...not insurance companies.  the government will squeeze insurance companies until they go out of business.  it's already started.  the way insurance companies worked before is that they made a profit or they lost money based on good or bad decisions.  they made money on monthly premiums that people paid in.  if a person didn't get sick they collected the money as a hedge against those who did.  they employ actuary's who do statistics on the odds of a person getting sick or not.  then if they got it right, they made money.  if they got it wrong they lost money.

what do they do with profits.  well, some of that money goes to share holders.  a lot of shareholders are average folks who have a retirement fund at work...like a 401k.  other shareholders are private investors.  if the insurance company makes money...the folks make money.  the folks lose money if the insurance company makes the wrong decisions, but usually they get it right.  under pres. obama, insurance companies have to give their customer's a refund if they don't go to the doctor.  under obama, the insurance can pay its' bills and make a profit determined by the government.

any money left after that has to go back to people that have paid premiums but didn't go to the doctor.  with only making what the government says it can make in profits, the shareholders get hurt.  those people with 401k's make only as much as the government imposed limits on the insurance company's profit allows.  if there is no profit incentive in owning or investing in an insurance company...retirement fund manager's and private investors will get out of insurance and move into something more profitable...maybe not even in this country.

insurance companies aren't the only companies that will be getting squeezed by obamacare.  your employer will be another.  the extra cost incurred by insurance companies of having to cover children until they're 25 or pre-existing conditions will make it tougher for your company to help you pay a portion or all of your insurance as they do now.  there is a good chance they'll drop you and let you go into obamacare.  obamacare will have a panel of 15 appointed members who will decide how much the government is willing to spend on the millions of different medical problems that millions of people may have.

that means they may say...okay, there is 80% chance of occurrence within the population who may get breast cancer, but only a 5% chance for kidney failure.  then they may decide to not put as much or none at all on that kidney problemst.  if you're unlucky enough to have one of those ailments then you'll have to find a way to pay for it yourself, live with the ailment or die if that comes along.  obamacare won't cover it.  doctors won't have to take the fees offered by obamacare.  they may just take patients who can afford to pay for their services.

doctors may not want to take the fee that the government says it will pay for this or that and they won't.  therefore, there will be fewer doctors and if you need to see one under obamacare, you'll have to wait until you can get an appointment because of the doctor shortage. let me briefly explain how medicare 1 and 2 works and then medicaid because it all ties in together.  medicare provides healthcare to seniors for major medical.  things like nursing home care, surgeries etc.  part 2 covers 80% of doctors visits for seniors.  a senior can buy supplement insurance to cover the deductible.

it's often cheaper to not pay a monthly fee for the supplemental unless you go to the doctor often. seniors have had medicare taken out of their checks during their lifetime and it goes into a government pool to help take care of them when they're older.  president obama says he is going to save medicare $716 billion dollars by reducing doctor's fees and fraud...my guess most of it will come from reducing doctor's fees.  again, the doctors don't have to then accept medicare patients and many of them are now choosing not to.  this means fewer doctors are going to be there when you need one who accepts medicare.

the $716 billion dollar savings won't go back to seniors in the form of getting a rebate or discount.  it will go to obamacare to give free services to those who don't have it.  they too will be faced with fewer doctors and a panel of 15 who determines their fate. medicaid is a program that provides care not based on age but on ability to pay.  if you're low income the state pays for it.  under obamacare, the states were offered in increase in federal funding to those states for two years.  most states are deciding to opt out of the extra federal money for two years because it will cost more to cover the extra people after the second year and this would kill state budgets as they already struggle to balance their budgets, which they must do by law.

also with medicaid, if you have medicare, it will cover whatever medicare does not cover.  to sum it up, the democrats are trying to through obamacare, bankrupt the "evil profit centers" of insurance companies and take over the healthcare industry.  you will have no insurance companies competing for your business if they are successful...you will have the same government handling your healthcare that loses your mail, ignores your complaints and has rude and uncaring government employees.  why would you want that when we now have the best healthcare in the world that just needs to be tweaked...not taken over completely by the government.

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